This morning I’m with the body, this body, and this wider body of which I’m part.  Birds are singing and swinging across the sky as more and more blossoms emerge. My heart has wings and spring.  

I come in from outside and watch a video of Thich Nhat Hanh. He says: Breathing in, I’m aware of my body – breathing out I release tensions in my body.”

This act of love allows us to address our suffering, and the suffering of our ancestors, and that understanding brings compassion, compassion for ourselves and the world.  

 He says: “Be aware of your body. Your body is a masterpiece of the cosmos. The consciousness of the cosmos.  Do you have the capacity to appreciate the wonder that is your body? Mother Earth is in you. Not underneath, or all around you- but in you, also.  Father sun is in you; you are made of sunshine. You are made of fresh air, of fresh water. To be aware of that wonder, to value that wonder can only bring you a lot of happiness… Understanding suffering always brings compassion that has the power to heal, and you suffer less.”

In her book Stalking Wild Psoas, Liz Koch, writes about Emilie Conrad, the founder of Continuum.  Conrad says, “The fluid system is primary and not bound by the nervous system.”  “The primary characteristic of any fluid system is its ability to keep transforming itself.”

As “a masterpiece of the cosmos”, we are fluid. We are not fixed.

I’ve mentioned Heather Cox Richardson and her column on the politics of the day.  Today she gives a historical perspective of the two political parties in the U.S., and how though often opposite in approach, they cared about the country as a whole.  It’s been a back and forth until now.

She writes: 

In 1859, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who had thrown in his lot with the Republicans, articulated a new ideology for the party. Drawing from the era’s rising political economists, he denied the Democratic idea that the world was divided between the haves and the have nots, and said instead that all Americans shared a harmony of interests. The government’s role was not to broker between two opposing forces, but rather to expand equality of opportunity and access to resources for poor men just starting out. As those men worked, they would produce capital—Republicans actually called capital “pre-exerted labor”—which they would use to buy goods, keeping the economy growing. When they made enough money, they would hire others just starting out, who would, in turn, begin to make money themselves. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him,” Lincoln said. “This… is free labor — the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all — gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.”

As a country, the United States stands on a precipice. Do we allow an oligarchy or do we step up in the fullness of our fluidity and connectivity to honor the wholeness of the cosmos we are, and allow the wonder of this masterpiece to spring forth like buds and birds in this unfolding new season of the year?

I’ve been outside enjoying spring’s arrival when I come inside to read an article on therapy dogs and a pig at SFO.  They wear harnesses that say “pet me” and are there to comfort and entertain. We live in a world of so much beauty.   Touch. Receive.

Immerse.

Read about the Wag Brigade:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SFO-therapy-dogs-animals-pig-airport-wag-brigade-14121957.php

My husband is setting the alarm for 4:30 and rising enthused about work.

I rise a little later giving myself permission to lie in bed and mentally roam.  Lately, I’m obsessed with babies and my three month and counting grandson.

I’m aware of roundness and reach, and focus near and far.  I push him on the swing; he comes forward and flows back. Over and over we play with this shift in distance and space, until I feel the call to lift him out for a kiss and a hug.

I touch his nose with my nose and pull back – near and far, one of our favorite games so far.  He laughs and I laugh. We mirror joy, relate as one and two and more as there is sky above us and grass beneath, or carpet at times, or wood.  We notice texture, skin, clothes, touch, smell. He always smells baby-sweet.  

I think of all the children in the world, each coming with different gifts.  How do we honor and utilize each one? How do we do that for ourselves?

Right now, it’s dark outside and inside this room, there’s only the light of this screen.  I light a candle, watch the flame, a nostril moving light through air. Cat Bella is on the chair next to me, insisting on attention.  I kiss her, and use words with her, each word a touch, a flame.

Air responds to words like candlelight, and soon the sun will bring her full embrace to the day, a day between Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s Day.

Bliss.

This moment clarifies bliss as it opens to nurture and inspire the courage of Lincoln as we kiss our own hand to fluff the air as it moves in and out.

Like this day, we are new; we are Baby Light!

Yesterday my daughter-in-law asked me why my third book was so different than the first two.  I answered that I didn’t want to write it and I had too many editors, too much outside input.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t value in the book for me and the reader, but I feel a fourth one brewing that will again return to the fullness of my own voice.

In the book “Airing Out the Fairy Tale”, I reveal that I was called to find my own ground, the ground of my birth, before culture and society put its stamp on me, and of course that stamp was how I took my environment in, but I needed to trek in a time period no longer available, and people felt I should share my experience since it was such an amazing and unique adventure and opportunity.  For me, it was a difficult and challenging time, and difficult and painful to go back to unravel, dissect, and reveal.

Yesterday spending time with my son, his wife, and their child, I felt again how we continue to learn.  This grandparenting is a letting go, a receiving of the new. I hope a fourth book comes my way but yesterday reminded me that it is to know and honor “enough” and to trust how the path reveals.

Namaste!